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There are several RSPCA branches in Essex, along with the affiliated Danaher Animal Home, all with pets looking for homes.

A firm in Braintree is celebrating a major milestone, after contributing to the recycling of one billion plastic straws.

It's opening to passengers later this year

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Global warming in the United States is amping up the country's sweet tooth, a new study found. When the temperature rises, Americans -- especially those with less money and education -- drink lots more sugary beverages and a bit more frozen desserts. That amounts to more than 100 million pounds of added sugar (358 million kilograms) consumed in the nation a year, compared to 15 years earlier, according to a team of researchers in the U.S. and United Kingdom. When temperatures go between 54 and 86 degrees (12 and 30 degrees Celsius), the amount of sugar the average American consumes goes up by about 0.4 grams per degree Fahrenheit (0.7 grams per degree Celsius) per day, based on researchers tracking of weather conditions and consumers' purchases. At 54 degrees, the amount of added sugar for the average American is a little more than 2 grams. At 86 degrees, it's more than 15 grams. Beyond that, appetites lessen and added sugar falls off, according to the study in Monday's Nature Climate Change. "Climate change is shaping what you eat and how you eat and that might have a bad effect on your health," said study co-author Duo Chan, a climate scientist at the University of Southampton. "People tend to take in more sweetened beverages as the temperature is getting higher and higher," Chan said. "Obviously under a warming climate that would cause you to drink more or take in more sugar. And that is going to be a severe problem when it comes to health." The findings have been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The comic-actor, 71, made the controversial remarks at a Chabad event at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has claimed the US economy 'is weakening' following the release of revised jobs data. 

A group led by RSS co-creator Eckart Walther has launched a new protocol designed to standardize and scale licensing of online content for AI training. Backed by publishers like Reddit, Quora, Yahoo, and Medium, Real Simple Licensing (RSL) combines machine-readable terms in robots.txt with a collective rights organization, aiming to do for AI training data what ASCAP did for music royalties. However, it remains to be seen whether AI labs will agree to adopt it. TechCrunch reports: According to RSL co-founder Eckart Walther, who also co-created the RSS standard, the goal was to create a training-data licensing system that could scale across the internet. "We need to have machine-readable licensing agreements for the internet," Walther told TechCrunch. "That's really what RSL solves." For years, groups like the Dataset Providers Alliance have been pushing for clearer collection practices, but RSL is the first attempt at a technical and legal infrastructure that could make it work in practice. On the technical side, the RSL Protocol lays out specific licensing terms a publisher can set for their content, whether that means AI companies need a custom license or to adopt Creative Commons provisions. Participating websites will include the terms as part of their "robots.txt" file in a prearranged format, making it straightforward to identify which data falls under which terms. On the legal side, the RSL team has established a collective licensing organization, the RSL Collective, that can negotiate terms and collect royalties, similar to ASCAP for musicians or MPLC for films. As in music and film, the goal is to give licensors a single point of contact for paying royalties and provide rights holders a way to set terms with dozens of potential licensors at once. A host of web publishers have already joined the collective, including Yahoo, Reddit, Medium, O'Reilly Media, Ziff Davis (owner of Mashable and Cnet), Internet Brands (owner of WebMD), People Inc., and The Daily Beast. Others, like Fastly, Quora, and Adweek, are supporting the standard without joining the collective. Notably, the RSL Collective includes some publishers that already have licensing deals -- most notably Reddit, which receives an estimated $60 million a year from Google for use of its training data. There's nothing stopping companies from cutting their own deals within the RSL system, just as Taylor Swift can set special terms for licensing while still collecting royalties through ASCAP. But for publishers too small to draw their own deals, RSL's collective terms are likely to be the only option.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who created a MAGA firebrand with millions of followers, was shot at a Utah university.

The TV presenter, 57, was all smiles as she posted a photo of herself smiling alongside her fellow The Masked Singer judge Maya Jama.

If AI is to become pervasive, as the model builders and datacenter builders who are investing enormous sums of money are clearly banking on it to be, then it really goes have to be a global phenomenon. …

OpenAI Lays Out The Principles Of Global-Scale Computing was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

The TV presenter, 50, admitted the This Morning team had been 'humbled' as they missed out on the award the last two years.

MSNBC sparked outrage for its 'disgusting' and 'shameful' on-air comments while covering the shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk at a college event in Utah.

Steve got visibly emotional as he hugged his co-star Jessie Wallace, who presented him with the award alongside Michelle Ryan.

The ITV chat show took home the award at London's O2 after missing out on the gong the previous two years.

The presenter, 35, was joined by her whole family and sweetly held hands with her daughters Rose, three, and Belle, two.

Although the show won big, its presenters Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly and its dancing cast were not present as they were pre-recording their launch show of the new series.

The region is no stranger to having big names as residents, with the Beckham family and Ellen DeGeneres among those setting up home in the countryside.

Cat, 48, and Patrick, 54, who have two boys together, announced the end of their marriage in July in a joint statement - insisting 'no other party' was involved.

The Love Island star, 34, exuded elegance in an angelic white gown with an asymmetrical neckline, that clung to every inch of her svelte frame.

Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said a gunman opened fire just after noon local time at Evergreen High School, located 28 miles southwest of Denver. At least one person has been killed.